I wholeheartedly agree, this site is better tham most (worse than some). My suggeston is to go back to 5 stars. Call anything you have under a 50 right now a 0, or .5 stars, and anything 95 or over 5 stars. Then round to the nearest 10th and convert to stars. The good thing about a star syste, from what I have noticed, is that people realize a 2.5 star game can atually be good, far more so than a game with a 50, despite having the same score. Basically, the star system has not yet been spoiled by gamers' skewed perceptions as much.

too long didnt read


but i do have something to say on this topic anyways...

sadly i find your reviews to be of much better quality than i find of the majority of your posts. i mislike almost all of those btw. i would happily complain about your reviews, if i could find some fault with them. and believe me....i tried.

Duke nukem did have alot of problems and i'd give i a 7 if not lower, but strangely enough i'd buy it(bargain ben). you seem to be one of the best reviewers based on reading the op so don't change wht you do and laugh at those who call you a hater.

i don't read reviews i just look at scores and move on if the score is wht i expected. i haven't seen Infamous 2 get any perfects which makes me wonder, but do to that consensus i have to respect that although the one 7.5 i saw left a bad taste in my mouth.

i like the review system here because most of the time its not the same reviews seen on other sites. on other sites you'll see perfects in droves but never has there been a perfect game and as you can tell i even under scored Uncharted2 and gave it a 9.3 instead of a 9.7 which is wht i wanted to give it.

the only thing i found wrong with Uncharted was there was to much platforming. action and platforming weren't balanced enough for me.

the thing here though is that we are all game critic's. if we weren't we wouldn't be playing games and deciding which games to buy or not to buy based on opinion and wht we see.

if you've seen any of my post about next gen or owning any home console you'll get the same consensus, and thats innovation, dedication, and new ip before the purchase of hardware. and thats just first party.

i won't settle for less. hey i grew up on fucking pong and Mario like the op and those games were great then but now Mario needs a new outfit if you catch my drift. to put it more bluntly put that bitch on the shelf for about 5 yrs so he can fell fresh next time i see him and not stale. i hated to do that but nostalgia is wearing off on Mario.

even my thread on Nintendo 2011 E3 got me some heat but i don't care cause it sucked. ok it was stale. don't show me some dam controller show me games.

if you think i'm a hater fine, but if you can understand wht i'm saying and agree with it then your not blindly following nostalgia, you've grown to have a mind of your own.

I think you need to learn how to differentiate between objectivity and subjectivity.   I didn't write a page complaining about the numerical values of reviews, I complained about important factors not being factored in, resulting in mediocre games getting high reviews, and I also complained about how an extreme review (be it positive or negative) will almost always get blind praise and needless hate.  You need to learn to not apply your own bias to my arguments.  your counterpoints have almost nothing to do with what I was talking about. 

the rest of this post is filled with statements that sould be followed immediately by "in my opinion."  but instead you're presenting them as undeniable fact.  You need to realize that game review needs to speak to its audience, and the method we have is more or less fine.  It's not perfect, but it's certainly a lot better than your suggested traditional sin-curve with 50% being the perfect average.  That requires entirely too much re-adjustment and universal values that are objectively infallible.  As long as all gamers have different tastes, any universal review scheme is fundamentally flawed.  

What we have now works just fine, where different values (8/10, etc) have different meanings.  There's absolutely no need to alter it.  if you like it better, go  right ahead and use it when you review.  I used to review using the same method but quickly found that it was horribly flawed since people generally know and understand what current scores mean. 

besides, all sites should have an explantion to show what each score means, like we do here and like I do.  The only thing that you're inherently right about is that no review shoud ever be 100 or 0.  There always needs to be room to adjust.  

My method works fine.  

Whats the matter?  Can't handle someone who's job it is to have an opinion having  a negative opinion about something you happen to like?  my opinion on Kinect is that it's currently garbage and is showing no signs of getting better.  Your aggressive attitude isn't doing a lot to help your credibility and frankly I'm just facepalming over the ignorance of this response. 

Maybe you missed the part that clearly stated "it's not about matching up with MY tastes." It was a fairly important part of my post which invalidated half of your current one. Unless you meant to imply that the math/statistics are my opinion... which... ROFL did you just try to imply statistics are subjective?

I also particularly enjoy your "speaking to the audience part," is that spposed to be a euphemism for stroking the faonboys' epeen to get on their good side?

You also don't seem to get it, the Normal Distribution is all ABOUT different tastes. That's the ENTIRE point of it. Where at 50 you will find games where the most people think are better than half, worse than half. If I am to pick ANY game at random and do it multiple times, I should end up with an average of 50, not 80 (because, obviously, I would end up with many bad ones, a many good ones, and a hell of a lot of average ones). Basically, any scale that is used for comparisons can be modeled after the the normal distribution. If you somehow still think that this is all subjective, I need to know. It's much better to argue with a wall than someone who thinks the definitions of statistics are subjective.

Edit: Oh btw, the system I mentioned about the stars, all that does is normalize the scores, the whole meaning behind them is still very much left behind and all it really means is that things are just shifted to reflect a PROPER distribution.

mislike isn't a word.  and the only reason you started hating my posts is because I disagreed with you about whether it's okay to mutilate a baby's genitals, and you apparently have a problem with people who disagree with you regardless of the logic or rationale backing the opposing beliefs.  At least that's what I can tell based on your responses I've seen, not just to my own posts but to others' as well.  

It's rather funny how you can still be rude while complimenting people.  you might want to consider changing that. 

I'd add PC Gamer UK to that list, in fact moreso than Edge, although this could be because they specialise in PC Games where there are a lot more low budget titles released. Looking through last months editions I see a few 30s, a 40, a few 60s and some 70-80s. A full range.... and they gave Duke Nukem Forever a 29 (ouch!). That, the quality of their writing, articles and reviews make it one of the better publications IMO and one that most sites/magazines should look to emulate.

I still miss computer gaming world. WHat a nice publication that was while using almost the full range of scores (sure they had like 10 5 stars and only 2 0 stards, but still). I also miss Tom Chicks strategy game reviews, always spot on.

As long as you continue to write impartial reviews to the best of your ability then I wouldn't worry too much what others think. You're always going to get some negative feedback especially on the big budget titles. Just keep being as honest and impartial in your reviews as possible whilst always looking for ways to improve your critique and reviewing process. That's the most anyone can ask.